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Dr Philip Harrold, Associate Professor of History at Trinity School for Ministry, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has kindly kicked off this section on fresh expressions in church history. He has written this page and the pages listed at the end. This page contains:

• let's imagine that Christians are part of a long story
• let's also imagine that Christians in that long story have faced challenges not unlike our own
• in the Book of Acts we learn that the mission in Antioch...
• we can learn a great deal from this story
• so at Antioch we see the five values for missionary churches

Let's imagine that Christians are part of a long story that begins with God's great saving deeds revealed in the Scriptures, reaches a turning point in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then continues over various times and places in the church as it is led by his Spirit.

What makes this ongoing story so important for us is that it tells us how other Christians have strived, much as we do, to live the gospel story. We actually pick up where they have left off, receiving and passing on the way of life we know in Jesus, translating it into our own time and place.

We get a certain feel for how to do this and what the possibilities are by continuing the conversation that began so long ago. To be aware of these amazing connections over time gives us perception and perspective as we move forward. This is who we are and what we do as the Spirit leads us - it is an ancient-future faith.

Let's also imagine that Christians in that long story have faced challenges not unlike our own, especially when it comes to living the way, truth and life of Christ according to Scripture and with the sort of improvisation needed to make his story truly life-changing. 

There have always been 'fresh expressions' of church because followers of Jesus have always faced changes in their missionary contexts, much as we do today.

In the book of Acts we learn that the mission to Antioch presented the early church with an unprecedented opportunity to bring large numbers of non-Jewish people into the faith.

Much was at stake for the Jerusalem church, as we learn in Acts 11 and 15. Even though it was clear that the Holy Spirit was impartial to Jewish-Gentile distinctions, the more traditional Jewish members of the church insisted that the new believers keep the law of Moses according to Jewish custom.

That meant, first and foremost, the practice of circumcision as a mandatory rite of passage - a very significant and cherished sign of covenantal identity to Jews but, alas, 'on the neck ... a yoke' (Acts 15.10) for the Antiochene community.

Ultimately, the Jerusalem believers decided that Gentiles should not have to become Jews first. For it 'seemed good to the Holy Spirit' (Acts 15.28) that new believers would translate the gospel into their own way of life. Indeed, this was very good news because it was much more in keeping with what the prophets had said would happen (Acts 15.16-17).

We can learn a great deal from this story:

First, we see how the church came to recognise its missionary identity. The apostle James, who led the Jerusalem church, addressed this head-on when he recalled the prophet Amos's words about all those who would someday 'seek the Lord', including 'all the Gentiles over whom [the Lord's] name has been called' (Acts 15.16-17).

This was the work of a missionary God, now defined by the redemptive mission of his Son to the whole world and proclaimed by a new people, who were anointed and energised by the Spirit to continue that mission.

Secondly, the church continued Christ's mission according to his incarnational principle - that is, the newly formed Christian community moved into each and every local community it encountered and, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's words, became 'contemporary'. The church was the new body of Christ, making him known 'in the flesh' of time and place, in love and service, in word and deed.

In the case of Antioch, all this happened in a non-Jewish culture and in the diverse cosmopolitan environment of a great capital city for the whole of the eastern Roman empire. That is why the Antiochene Christians had to do things differently to the church in Jerusalem.

Thirdly, the wall of separation created by the Jewish law came down and the emerging church at Antioch began to welcome an entirely new population to the faith. As it did so, it underwent a startling transformation. We learn from Peter's report at the Jerusalem Council that the Holy Spirit had been given to those who had first heard the gospel and a deep spiritual change had begun.

The fact that the church at Antioch became so important to the missionary work of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14.26-28; 15.31-35) shows how it became a church that served others, even those in faraway places.

Fourthly, making disciples was a priority. The missionary church at Antioch was made of folk like Nicolaus - a Gentile who had converted to Judaism and was 'full of the Spirit and of wisdom' (Acts 6.3-5). They eagerly spread the word about Jesus and turned the word 'disciple' into a verb.

Over the next twenty-or-so years, Antiochene Christians built up a strong, enduring mission outpost that featured prominently every time Paul launched a new missionary journey.

It must have been a very lively community, engaging the culture at home and abroad, sending its own members to serve wherever needed, and adding exponentially to the numbers of disciples that would eventually blanket the entire Roman Empire.

Finally, relationships between Christians made all this possible. Paul, for one, seems to have spent a great deal of time in Antioch, sharing his missionary reports, preaching and teaching, advocating for the fledgling community against the Jerusalem traditionalists, and perhaps finding rest and restoration in the midst of his extensive travels.

No longer the centre of conflict, Antioch became the centre of welcome and hospitality to the Christian movement, for ever witnessing to the freedom of the gospel from the law (in addition to Acts 14.26-28 and 15.31-35, see 18.22-23).

So at Antioch we see the five values for missionary churches that have always been recognised in the history of the Christian faith as essential to the sort of 'fresh expressions' we look for today. A missionary church is:

• Focused on the Triune God - Father, Son and Spirit
• Incarnational
• Transformational
• Disciple-making
• Relational

Any new inculturation of the gospel that has been blessed by God will put these values to work as it transposes the good news into a new key of life ... and 'in such a way that convinces, converts and transforms those who respond...'. (Mission-shaped Church: Church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context [Church House Publishing, 2004, pp.13-14 and 81-83]. Here is found a more detailed discussion of the five values of a missionary church.)

In the following pages, stay tuned to these five values as we look at a series of fresh expressions in the history of the missionary church. Be attentive to the way these values persist even as the transposition leads to a dazzling variety of new patterns of Christian life and modes of witness. The script stays the same, but the performance is different every time.

• Real presence at Antioch
• The word of life from the north to the south of England
• The Benedictines
• Thomas Cranmer
• Nicholas Ferrar's holy calling
• John Wesley's mirror of God
• Charles Kingsley's life in the kingdom
• Dorothy L Sayers' pub audience

What are fresh expressions all about?

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